In January, everybody is making changes in the name of living life to the fullest. What does that even mean? What is a full life, and why ARE we alive? My honest answer starts with WHO KNOWS IT’S CRAZY. But then I think about the long chain of human existence and where I fit in it. What we have been through, and what triumph, I hope, is going to come. I think we are meant to love and serve the people who happen to be walking around on our patch of earth at the same time we are. I think we are meant to learn something from the ones before us, and to leave something—our art, our inventions, and our stories—for those who will be walking around here when we no longer are.

I think part of my purpose is to bear witness. To keep stories safe and pass them on, to find and share connection even if it would sometimes be easier to accept the disconnect.

It’s summer! School is out and the living is easy, if you are a kid. You can stay up late, ride your bike around town all day, and eat watermelon and ice cream until you burst. Unless you are my kid; then, you will also hear a lot about responsibilities and be encouraged or ENCOURAGED to just read a book for a while please. The truth is that I always loved school and I think that my children love it too. I had a client who certainly didn’t take it for granted:

I’ve had the privilege of working on a No Dull Life book (that is just about finished!) for a couple in their eighties. Both Hans and his wife immigrated to the United States from Germany (via Canada) when they were in their twenties. We have frequently discussed what drove them to take the risk and embark on this adventure. I love Hans’s explanation of that force, which was his desire for freedom:

When the British bombs began to rain down on Dusseldorf every two or three days and Hans’s grandparents’ home was destroyed (happily, they were safe at a saloon when their house was bombed), Hans’s father, who was in the German air force, decided to evacuate the family to his brother’s home in eastern Germany.